SBS News' Technical Woes

Ben Fajzullin: Coming up in SBS World News Australia at nine-thirty: anti-government protesters in Thailand have ended their siege of government buildings in Bangkok. The Thai army has been cracking down on the protesters with at least... are we going to get some pictures?

— SBS World News promo, 14th April, 2009

Not this time, Ben. Why don't you go again, and we'll put that take in the bin?

But instead, SBS put it to air.

Welcome to Media Watch. I'm Jonathan Holmes.

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the ABC's struggles with its new computer system, Ignite.

But to be scrupulously fair, as we always are, we should point out that SBS News has been accident-prone recently too.

For example, this was the lead story on its 6.30 bulletin last Monday night:

INAUDIBLE

— SBS World News, 20th April, 2009

Karen, what's happened to your voice? That went on for more than two interminable minutes.

We did get a nice apology from newsreader Neena Mairata - but then a few stories later, it happened again.

INAUDIBLE

— SBS World News, 20th April, 2009

Another minute and a half of garble instead of Rena Sarumpaet's report on Rio Tinto's fiery AGM.

And that wasn't Rena's only problem last week.

As well as a reporter, she's also a part-time newsreader.

But they seem to have crossed to her a bit early for this news update:

Madmen, Thursday 8.30 on SBS

RENA STUDIES MAP

— SBS World News update, 22nd April, 2009

Rena was hunting for Barrow Island on the map.

Rena Sarumpaet: Yeah so I just need to say if it's north or west. North? Well I just, I haven't got that...

— SBS World News update, 22nd April, 2009

Hi there Rena! We're all watching!

In the end, viewers never did find out whether Rena found out where Barrow Island was.

We're in a transitional phase to a new digital playout platform, introduced 6 weeks ago. We are having issues... a higher level of on-air mistakes than we'd normally have and that's because of the new technology.

Customer :

28 Apr 2009 10:00:50am

Last time you wasted everyones time telling us about ABC's technical glitches, and now you have decided because you have wasted everyones time noting ABC's technical glitches to be fair you will waste everyones time highlighting other networks technical glitches also. What a waste of everyones time..poor tax payers, the money could have gone into increasing Kev's pay out.

Mike :

27 Apr 2009 11:09:14pm

It's a shame Rena's only a part-time reader.She's very good and deserves a better go than she gets, particularly when SBS imports OS readers , presumably at considerable cost.If it must use 'ethnic' readers, and I'm not sure why they do these days, why not use home grown ones. There are certainly plenty of non-Anglo journos out there.